While Secretary of State Bill Bradbury fine-tunes his plan for redrawing legislative borders in coming weeks, he’ll consider two hours of public testimony delivered by Eugene-area residents Tuesday night at City Hall.
Bradbury has until Aug. 15 to finish his redistricting proposal, which under the state constitution he had to draft when the Legislature failed to redraw congressional lines before its session ended. Every ten years, the state must adjust House and Senate borders to match census figures.
Most speakers discussed Bradbury’s so-called “wheel and spoke” approach to drawing boundaries, which entails lumping both urban and rural areas into single legislative districts.
For the University area, Bradbury recommends a House district that would span from east campus neighborhoods west to Veneta, and from Franklin Boulevard south to rural neighborhoods. The current House district for this area stretches west only to City View Street.
The most prominent change in the area’s Senate boundaries — seats 20, 21 and 22 — is an eastward expansion for seat 21.
Tuesday’s meeting was one of 21 stops Bradbury is making across the state to hear feedback on his proposal.
“The hearing in Eugene was like others we had in the state — just really valuable input and really helpful information,” Bradbury said Wednesday morning on his way to a public hearing in McMinnville. “All the comments will be considered.”
Support for Bradbury’s wheel and spoke redrawing were mixed, but backers slightly outnumbered opponents.
Some speakers, such as Jim Edmunson, who lives in the River Road area, said rural interests are different enough from urban interests to warrant separate representation.
Other speakers, such as Edward Winter, who owns a farm in an unincorporated area near Crow and works in Eugene, said that with the timber industry stagnating, more rural dwellers are working in the city. Therefore, he said, it’s reasonable to combine rural and urban legislative districts.
Few speakers discussed the political ramifications of the plan, saying the draft either fairly or unfairly separates Democratic and Republican voter blocks. In other news reports, state Republicans accused Bradbury, a Democrat, of redrawing boundaries to make Democratic voting blocks stronger than Republican ones.
Bob Avery, the chairman of the Lane County Republican party, accused Bradbury of gerrymandering.
“There appears to be a statewide effort to dilute rural votes,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine what the University of Oregon community has in common with Veneta.”
Bradbury said at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting that his redistricting plan was drawn in accordance with state law, which required House seats to represent 57,023 people and Senate seats to represent 114,047 people.
Other state laws require Bradbury to honor existing geographic and political boundaries, keep communities of interest in the same districts, avoid splitting voting groups, consider transportation issues, maintain some sense of continuance and to give no favor to politicians.
To view Bradbury’s proposed map, visit: www.sos.state.or.us/redistrict/redistrict.htm.